The legal mess to extradite a former United States paramilitary chief to Colombia

Salvatore Mancuso is escorted by DEA agents upon arrival in Florida.Alan Diaz / AP

When the former paramilitary chief, Salvatore Mancuso, one of the best-known protagonists of the war in Colombia, was extradited to the United States in 2008, he uttered a phrase that still resonates in the Andean country: "With me they extradited the truth." Twelve years have passed and now it is his return to Colombia that has entangled the Colombian justice system, which, from different sides, is required to make more forceful and urgent efforts to bring him back.

Mancuso, who was one of the bloodiest leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), served a sentence for drug trafficking and is in the Irwin jail, in the state of Georgia. But in recent days it became known that he could be deported to Italy, a country of which he has citizenship and with which Colombia has no extradition treaty. This triggered the alarms of the victims who were waiting for their return to Bogotá to learn details of the truth that the paramilitary took with him when he was sent to the United States, along with 13 other members, during the government of Álvaro Uribe.

During these years, Mancuso continued to collaborate with Justicia y Paz, the Colombian court that judges the crimes of the self-defense groups and gives reduced sentences in exchange for them telling the truth about crimes. He is accused of directing 139 massacres in which 800 people were killed, among other crimes such as displacement and kidnapping. However, given the role he played in the conflict, if he was deported to Italian soil, the truth about the ties of economic and political power with the armed group he led would also be lost.

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“Salvatore Mancuso's testimony could help uncover the truth about hundreds of heinous crimes and guarantee justice for thousands of victims. But so far the Colombian authorities have done very little to obtain his extradition, and the steps they have taken have been notoriously negligent, ”denounced José Miguel Vivanco, director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch.

The Colombian Government has made three extradition requests but in one of them, Vivanco has warned, they made "inexcusable mistakes" that would have been discovered with "an online search." And the other two were not accepted by the United States either because the legal bases they used to support them do not coincide with the legislation of that country. "Considering that there are hundreds of pending cases against Mancuso and that the Colombian authorities have extensive experience with extradition processes, these three mediocre extradition requests are difficult to reconcile with the importance this case deserves," said the regional director. Human Rights Watch. "Colombia has done a conspicuously negligent job to extradite Mancuso from the US," Vivanco added.

President Iván Duque has told the local press that his wish is for Mancuso to return to Colombia and "pay the penalties for crimes against humanity that he committed." And he added that, "if for any reason he arrives in Italy" he will be the first to present his case to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. But sectors of the opposition consider that it is a matter of rhetoric and not of concrete actions that lead to the extradition of the paramilitary leader. Others even doubt whether the errors made in the application were intentional or unintentional.

Now an opportunity opens for the legal entanglement to be unlocked and the paramilitary chief to be extradited to Colombia. The Justice and Peace Chamber of the Superior Court of Bogotá has just ordered that Mancuso be arrested for extradition purposes, arguing that the paramilitary has not yet completed the requirements to be released.

And, in any case, there is also another investigation for money laundering, which would allow Colombia to request it in extradition. In principle, the authorities would not have used that letter because Mancuso had requested to submit to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), a court created in the peace agreements with the FARC, which judges ex-guerrilla combatants, the military and third parties. that financed the armed conflict. Mancuso asked to enter as a third party, the JEP rejected him and he appealed. However, the president of the JEP, Patricia Linares, has already announced that there is no impediment for the Prosecutor's Office to request the paramilitary for extradition. The next move is then in the hands of the Colombian government.